Hi folks, it's been a while since I posted a blog here, but I wanted to highlight an interesting trend in the games industry and a company that has so far given us surprising results.
So, with releases like Anthem, then Battlefront, and most recently Cyberpunk 2077 releasing in an incomplete or broken state, we are seeing a trend where games are just not up to snuff, even after heavy Day-1 patches. Other devs, like the makers of Mount & Blade Bannerlord and Subnautica decide to go to Early Access first and have the community test the game for them. But it's clearer than ever before that games are releasing with more bugs than you can shake a stick at.
As a Software Developer, I would like to defend the game developers a little bit. Games are complex. They have many tools that can fail, and they have many interactions and dynamic systems at play that can break in any number of unknown ways. Certainly, not every combination of these systems can be tested. Also, games are played so at the very least we need good play testers. Early Access users can fill that gap for small studios, but large studios either don't give their testers enough time, or they under commit to the number of bugs they are willing to ship.
One developer that stands out from the rest however is Nintendo. After playing several of the more recent releases from Nintendo, I can easily see that there are very few bugs in their titles. Animal Crossing New Horizons, The New Pokémon Snap, and even collaboration games like Hyrule Warriors release at a pretty solid state. (I don't think Nintendo will be a company that releases games in 'Early Access' any time soon).
I think one key issue is the fact most modern games are built with third party tools and middle-ware. These things aim at making game making easier, at the expense of owning the code at a more fundamental level. Nintendo likely builds all their games with their own proprietary tools, on their own hardware (the Switch) and they get to know all the systems inside and out. It's like Apple developing for iOS, it's always going to be a smoother and more stable experience. But as games are made multi-platform, and use increasingly more dynamic systems, they are going to end up with a lot more issues down the line. Nintendo gets to avoid this with their 'walled garden' approach to game development. I think other studios should learn from that, but more importantly, I think if they aren't releasing on their own system with their own proprietary software, game developers should take the extra time. I for one would love to see extra commitment in testing and quality assurance.
Now that said, an unfortunate side-effect is that most AAA game studios don't really seem to care if they release an incomplete or broken game. All the games I mentioned releasing with issues were all very successful in terms of sales. But if I were a publisher however, I would be cautious of any damage to my reputation. Hello Games suffered the most with No Mans Sky, but also redeemed the most, for instance, so it is worth fixing an incomplete game. Even though Anthem was a success in sales, it will likely turn people away from BioWare titles in the future, and since they scrapped Anthem 2.0, I for one, have little faith in any future titles from this company (I am looking forward to the Mass Effect re-release, but I really don't think they could mess that up, and as an aside, I think a move like this is safer for BioWare right now).
We also have a lovely little quote from Shigeru Miyamoto who said a rushed game is forever bad, but a delayed game is eventually good. In fact, Nintendo Enthusiast ran a great breakdown of Nintendo adhering to this, almost as if policy, here: Is Shigeru Miyamoto's 'A delayed game is eventually good' rule true for Nintendo? (nintendoenthusiast.com)
What are some other games and developers you believe consistently put out bug free games?
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